A Guide to the Charles Wright Mills Papers, 1934-1965, 1997, 2000

Biographical Note

American sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) was born in Waco, Texas. In 1934 he enrolled as an undergraduate at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, but one year later transferred to the University of Texas. In Austin he met and married Dorothy Helen Smith. His first published work, "Language, Logic and Culture" appeared in the American Sociological Review in 1939. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin (1942), and worked as a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland from 1941 to 1945, then at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University from 1945 to 1948. Mills was appointed to the full time faculty at Columbia in 1946 and served there until his death in 1962. He and Dorothy separated in 1945. From 1947 to 1959 Mills was married to Ruth Harper, and subsequently to Yaroslava Surmach until his death. His major works include White Collar: The American Middle Class (1951), The Power Elite (1956), The Causes of World War III (1958), and The Sociological Imagination (1959), as well as numerous articles, addresses and reviews. A self-described Texas maverick, Mills’ relations with other sociologists were sometimes contentious. He traveled extensively to Europe, Russia and Latin America, and maintained a wide-ranging correspondence. First diagnosed with angina in 1957, Mills died of a heart attack at his home in West Nyack, New York in March 1962.

Scope and Contents

Typescripts and drafts, notes, notebooks and journals, research reports by Mills and others, survey instruments and tables of survey results, correspondence, reviews and clippings from newspapers and journals document the academic, professional and personal interests of C. Wright Mills, from his days as a University of Texas undergraduate during the 1930s until his death in 1962. The collection includes typescripts and mimeographed drafts of his books in various stages of completion, as well as drafts of articles, speeches and reviews. Other literary productions represented include statistical reports, seminar papers, magazine and journal articles, and classroom materials for courses taught by Mills and others. The bulk of the collection consists of newspaper and magazine clippings organized by subject or by project, many with underlining and written comments by Mills. These research and project files also contain scattered correspondence, notes and literary productions by Mills. The collection includes a few financial records, bibliographies and resumes of Mills’ career.

Restrictions

Access Restrictions

Unrestricted access.

Use Restrictions

Unrestricted use.

Administrative Information

Preferred Citation

Charles Wright Mills Papers, 1934-1965, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

Processing Information

The C. Wright Mills papers were accessioned by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in 1970. The papers had been removed from wooden cases that Mills built for himself, and their original arrangement could not be entirely preserved. The papers have been left in the order in which they were received, as we believe this replicates, to some extent, their arrangement in Mills’ office and home. Folder titles in this finding aid replicate, to the extent possible, the titles written on the original folders by Mills. Titles in [brackets] were supplied by the archivist, to identify mislabeled or unlabeled folders. Other materials by and pertaining to Mills are in the collection of the Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas, Austin.

Detailed Description of the Papers